Festo announces Handling Guide Online

February 7, 2015 - Festo announces Handling Guide Online. Technicians and engineers can now order new system solutions intelligently and intuitively via the new Festo Handling Guide Online.

Arrive at the right, standard handling system including CAD model with just a few clicks in only 20 minutes. The individual steps including RFQ, layout, quotation and CAD design, for which 10 to 15 days were required in the past, have been shortened to a 20 minutes by the Handling Guide Online.

The Handling Guide Online opens up entirely new horizons with standardised handling systems: it cuts assembly and delivery times with reductions from nearly two months to just a few weeks. New standard products are also shortening parameterisation and commissioning time. Machine and equipment manufacturers are thus able to reduce time-to-market by roughly 70% with regard to integrated handling systems.

Thanks to the brand new engineering tool, design engineers gain time and space for creativity in planning and project engineering processes for their companies’ core areas of technological expertise. Sifting through catalogues, tedious supplier RFQs, ordering individual components and complex individual constructions for handling tasks are thus a thing of the past forever.

IA large portion of the engineering costs are eliminated and detailed product knowledge is unnecessary. Intuitive software with structured data querying ensures reliable selection of the right components from the modular handling system. Direct querying of net prices provides for planning security.

Just three steps are enough to arrive at a fully configured handling system. During the first step, the engineer selects the desired type of handling system and enters the application data to the Handling Guide Online. The tool calculates appropriate handling systems, including price.

During the second step, the planner selects the most suitable handling system from these suggestions. The data sheet and the correctly configured CAD model are immediately made available for download in all common data formats for direct integration into the customer’s own design engineering system. During the third step, the engineer configures the selected system with additional options in accordance with his own requirements.

The selected handling system is then transferred to the shopping cart. The shopping cart function will be enabled as of the second quarter of 2015. A final click transmits the order to Festo. Handling experts from Festo deliver a ready-to-install system including user documentation in accordance with the EC Machinery Directive directly to the machine or system with extremely short lead-time.

In addition to flexible standard products, Festo also develops handling systems based entirely on individual, industry-specific requirements, for example with freely definable axis geometries for shorter cycle times or for integration into machines with minimal space requirements – including perfectly matched individual solutions for gripping, rotary motion and vacuum, as well as image processing with intelligent compact cameras for quality inspection and conveyor belt monitoring.

Because if the handling systems suggested by the Handling Guide Online should fail to meet the specified requirements despite the great variety of options, the design engineer can simply forward the entered application data to the handling experts from Festo with a single click in order to obtain an individualised quotation.

Matching control packages

Individually adaptable control packages link the handling system to the customer’s master controls for the overall system. The control package CMCA is available in particular for highly dynamic handling systems. This standardised, decentralised control package is integrated into the control cabinet or onto the mounting plate. It ensures extremely easy commissioning and reliability.

Process costs are reduced by our commissioning service, which is provided by trained experts. And system productivity is increased at the same time. The service includes inspection of wiring, connections, travel path and energy chains, configuration and parameterisation of the axes, optimisation of the control parameters and homing, operation of the axes in the test mode, data backup and documentation. The workload of the users is reduced as a result, and they have more time and elbowroom for other tasks involving their company’s core business activities.

About Festo:

Festo AG is a global player and an independent family-owned company with its headquarters in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany. The company supplies pneumatic and electrical automation technology to 300,000 customers of factory and process automation in over 200 industries. Our products and services are available in 176 countries. With about 16,700 employees in 61 companies worldwide, Festo achieved a turnover of around €2.28 billion in 2013. Each year over 7% of this turnover is invested in research and development. In this learning company, 1.5% of turnover is invested in basic and further training. Yet training services are not only provided for Festo's own staff – Festo Didactic GmbH also supplies basic and further training programmes in the field of automation technology for customers, students and trainees.